Vivian Explains: Evangelion
by I.Magickal.Vivian
Summary: In Which: Vivian explains the events of Neon Genesis Evangelion as best as anyone can except the creators with a grain of real world truth and a little speculation.
1. The First Impact

I feel it necessary to explain to people what the hell happened during the course of Neon Genesis Evangelion because let's be honest very few people get it and understand what the hell is going on the first time they watch it. So let's start where this mess began:

**The First Impact**

In the beginning there was this super advanced species of being called the First Ancestral Race that for reasons that were not explained created seven massive spaceships to transmit genetic material all throughout the galaxy called "Moons" or "Eggs" throughout the series. These moons are called "Seeds of Life" and come in two varieties: Fruit of Life that essentially meant that the developing life would have vast physical powers and strengths, and Seed of Knowledge which meant that the developing life would master scientific knowledge and develop civilization.

So basically if a Fruit of Life landed on a planet Angels would be the dominant species.

And if a Fruit of Knowledge landed then life would develop as it has in the real world.

The White Moon containing the being called "Adam" landed on earth at least 4 billion years ago but before angelic life could start the Black Moon containing the being called "Lillith" arrived on earth.

Due to some ridiculous rule two seeds of life cannot co-exist on the same planet because the joining of the Seed of Knowledge and the Seed of Life would make that race the equals of the First Ancestral Race because that's just how they roll.

To prevent this each moon is accompanied by an extremely powerful object called the Spear of Longinus or Lance of Longinus accompanies each Moon designed to be a kind of fail-safe to prevent two seeds of life from coming together. When "Lillith" arrived on Earth where "Adam" had already begun developing life their Spears activated to subdue one another.

The general assumption is that "Lillith's" spear was destroyed or lost somehow during the following events but I am pretty sure that her spear overpowered "Adam" because he had expended energy on creating life already and forced him into dormancy. Because he was subdued the spear had done its job and simple ceased to exist or somehow wore itself out like a battery.

The union of these two spears blasted off a huge chunk of the planet that eventually became the moon. The beginnings of angelic life were wiped out replaced by the primordial ooze from which terrestrial life evolved.

BAM!

First Impact, the basis of which were roughly influenced by the Giant Impact Theory which states that: during the early formation of our solar system a smaller planetoid called "Theia" collided with the early earth while it was still forming and the bits that it broke away became caught in earth's orbit and became the moon.


	2. Seele

**Seele**

An organization called Seele towards the end of World War II acquired the Dead Sea Scrolls and only released a part of the information contained within to the public. Through reading the 'Secret' Dead Sea Scrolls that they had kept they formulated a plan to create a super being that was god like or as god like as one can attain and fuse their consciousness's together inside of this super being.

It's really not clear whether or not they wanted to be all powerful before and this was just a ends to a means or if it was a heat of the moment kind of idea. But that didn't matter because they realized they had several problems they had to overcome.

_**Problem Number One:**_

_All humans possess an A.T. Field which is essentially a nearly impregnable barrier generated by the soul which surrounds each individual keeping their minds and souls separate from one another. But an A.T. Field can also interact with objects in the physical world and with other A.T. Fields_

How does one overcome this problem you ask, simple: Human Instrumentation or as it's better known Taangification.

Basically the idea is to force humans to rapidly evolve through the Third Impact, human bodies will be basically broken down to nothing and all human souls would be gathered into "Lillith's" "Moon" and united as one being. This would create a single existence where everyone would be part of a whole so that every flaw of an individual being is complemented by the strengths of others. So basically a perfect communist state and utopia all in one but with the mind instead, yet to become this one has to give up that which makes them an individual so it's a fate worse than death. It's ceasing to exist at all.

This all hinges on Seele being able to control this and have it only effect themselves and instead of being gathered into the Moon they would be gathered into this artificial being.

_**Problem Number Two:**_

_Destroying or somehow neutralizing the only weapon that would be powerful enough to destroy this god like being that they created, the Spear of Longinus_

That is not so simple, I mean it's some crazy weapon that can kill gods, so they decided that they would just merge it into this super being and make it even more powerful. Sure whatever, moving on to the third problem.

_**Problem Number Three:**_

_Finding the beings that created life to use them to their advantage and create from them some super being then fusing them together to create something even greater._

So I'll admit they don't really specify just how they managed to find "Adam" and "Lillith" though a large part of me is convinced that the moon containing "Lillith" was found first somewhere in the ocean. Unless there is some kind of map drawn into the Secret Dead Sea Scrolls as to where these two are they really didn't have a clue what they were looking for beyond maybe a basic description. Not because I am biased or anything but finding anything under the ice in Antarctica is a herculean feat especially if you didn't know that it was there to start with.

Here's how Vivian things that it happened and just bear with me because it makes sense:

1521 Ferdinand Magellan dropped a 700m (2300ft) long rope from his ship which did not reach the ground and concluded that the depth of the sea was infinite.

1818 Sir John Ross was the first to find that the deep sea is inhabited by life while catching jellyfish and worms at about 2000m (6550ft) beneath the sea.

1850 Micheal Sars found a rich deep sea fauna at a depth of 800m (2600ft)

1872 to 1876 the first systematic deep sea exploration was conducted by the Challenger Expedition on board the ship HMS Challenger lead by Charles Wyville Thomson

1989 to 1899 the first German deep sea expedition on board the ship Validivia lead by Carl Chun found many new species at depths greater than 4000m (13000ft)

1960 Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench – a depth of 10,740m (35236ft) in the Trieste where they observed numerous previous undiscovered species of fish and other deep sea organisms.

We're still finding things in the ocean, sixty foot whales that have never been seen before and the like.

Sometime after the end of World War II in 1945 and let's say 1990 to give them time to search the rest of the world they discovered a creature at the bottom of the ocean completely by chance on an expedition that they brought to the surface because it matched the description of the one talked about in the Dead Sea Scrolls so they hauled it to the surface and started looking for the other one.

How they managed to narrow their search down into Antarctica could possibly be because if it were anywhere else someone would have found it already and a note of it would be made in record. I saw this only because the depth at which it would have to be underground would be too hot for anything but an extremophile to live. I **say this only** because Seele could have never guessed that something as complex as Eighth Angel could exist in a volcano, honestly if I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have thought of it.

_**Problem Number Four:**_

_Finding people crazy enough to go through with what you want but without asking too many questions or at any point thinking that something is wrong with this whole situation._

Conning scientists isn't too hard as long as you have people from different fields working on radically different things that all come together and telling them each enough to motivate them to do what you want them to do by injecting romance in the form of beautiful or cunning fanatics. So to ensure that a man with some serious vision was in charge, Gendo Ikari, was seduced by Yui the daughter of an influential member of Seele and as much of a fanatic.


	3. The Second Impact

**The Second Impact**

Okay officially what went on the record was that on September 13, 2000 a meteorite moving at damn near the speed of light slammed into Antarctica with enough force that it melted all of the ice and pulverized the land, not to mention killed all of the penguins. Two billion people in the southern hemisphere were instantly killed by unreal tsunamis and more died as basically all the cities on the coast flooded. Somehow this meteorite managed to shift earth on its axis so more global catastrophes and ridiculous weather patterns previously unseen battered the people of earth already thrown into chaos.

World War III ensued as people fought over resources, shortages and the whole refuge problem; civil wars, ethnic conflicts the whole shebang. Two days after the disaster a nuclear exchange broke out between India and Pakistan, seven days after a nuclear bomb was detonated in Tokyo killing half a million people and in general it was hell on earth until February 14, 2001 when the Valentine Treaty but an end to the fighting.

All in all the global human population was cut in half and thousands of plant and animal species were now extinct and the basically everything below what looks like everything beneath the Roaring Screaming Sixties was reduced to a primordial ocean of LCL. All caused by a meteor that was too small for people to see…

Bullshit I say.

The Hubble Space Telescope was put into commission in 1993, the Gemini Observatories (North in Hawii and South in the Chilean Andes) saw first light in 2000, the European Southern Observatory in 1962, the Lovell Telescope in 1961… you get the point right someone would've seen it. I mean at this point man was very aware that complete and utter extinction would come from two sources: other men in the form of Nuclear World War III (which at the time hadn't really happened) and from a giant meteor hurtling through space fucking up our shit like it did the dinosaurs.

Take into account that shooting stars are the size of a grain of rice and burn up before they can reach the planet, this thing would've been noticed a long time before arriving at Earth by at least Gemini South but that's not the point because a meteorite didn't cause the Second Impact. And honestly if you told me at this point after a cataclysmic disaster that killed half of everyone on the planet it was because some scientist decided he was going to mess with something he didn't fully understand, I would kill you. So it's a decent cover story because everyone that could have confirmed it was either already on board or lived in the Southern Hemisphere and was already dead or had too many problems on their hands to deal with.

So they managed to find "Adam" somehow in the ice and send out a team, The Katsuragi Expedition, there to investigate him, my guess is that this had been going on for several years because they had at some point in time removed the Spear of Longinus and knew enough about "Adam" to decide to touch him.

He put off some serious energy but because of the refined version of "Lillith's" DNA touched "Adam", and ended up messing up the world. Before the energy went critical Dr. Katsuragi put his daughter, Misato, into what is essentially a black box like capsule and she was washed out onto the primordial sea resulting from the contact.

The end result was that "Adam" was awakened from the stasis he was in and basically blew baby batter all over the world during this explosion that over the course of the next fourteen years turned into embryos that eventually hatched and started destroying cities.

At the exact moment that the first Contact Experiment, by which I mean some dumb fuck touched him, occurred and "Adam" woke up Kaworu Nagisa was born from Adam, and the DNA of the poor bastard that touched him most likely, and thus somehow inherited "Adam's" soul. After which his body reverted to some weird embryo that looks like an undeveloped fetus before it specializes and starts looking like whatever it is that it is supposed to look like because as many people know with sexual reproduction the first few weeks embryos look the same as the central nervous system and all that jazz forms.


	4. Theory on the Second Impact Misato&Adam

Yay! Super unknown event that likely killed about 70+% of all life on Earth because everything in the ocean died not including those species that died during the earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, the alteration of seasons due to the altering of the Earth's tilt, and so much more.

**Theory on the Second Impact (Misato and Adam)**

Ben the Penman brought up a very valid point that needs to be addressed in his review of Chapter 3: The Second Impact (how long this will remain Chapter 3 remains to be seen) when he pointed out that Misato would have been around the age of the pilots and was put in a capsule similar to an Entry Plug which saved her life.

While it has been heavily implied that the Contact Experiment involving Adam was very similar to the Activation Experiments with evangelions which Misato may or may have not been involved in. I personally do not believe that she had anything to do with the Expedition other than being an unfortunate tag along because of her father and that nothing like the Activation Experiments were performed during the Katsuragi Expedition.

My basis for not believing that she was involved with the Contact Experiment is that she is the only person who is still alive from the Katsuragi Expedition that was in Antarctica at the time of the Second Impact. Sure that doesn't mean that she had anything to do with the technical part of the experiment but it basically boils down to the fact that she is alive.

Her life pod looked a lot like an Entry Plug I do not believe that it was because the image we see of Adam, he looks like an evangelion or better put evangelions look like him. When we see Shinji enter Unit-01 the head of the evangelion moves far forward exposing an artificial part of their spine that corresponds with what looks like the cervical vertebra. The fact that this is possible is because they are artificial constructs that are alive; if you were to create hollow in someone's neck between their cervical vertebra they would die. If you fracture or break a cervical vertebra you either end up a quadriplegic or you die.

How does this relate to Misato and Adam and the Second Impact? Well, Adam unlike evangelions was born and thus has a soul and an A.T. Field which means that he doesn't have a hollow in his spine specifically designed to hold an Entry Plug. To make a hollow would have cut off the signals for the brain so the body would have died before they could artificially reroute the nerves which would've been a monumental task. Unrealistic for 2000 even in Neon Genesis, there is entirely too many connections and they don't really specify just how much they know about the nervous system.

So even if we assume that they made a space and managed to synchronize someone with Adam he went berserk and then for all intents and purposes exploded. The Entry Plug does eject, it's like a black box that is all but evangelion proof, and if Misato had been at ground zero she would've been obliterated during the explosion or whatever happened there.

In the Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance all further speculation is completely demolished when we see in Kaji's flashback that Misato was put into the escape pod by her father before he was blown away leaving her with the cross like pendent she wears.

We don't really know what she was doing in Antarctica, not very many fathers would take their daughters along with them on a classified and dangerous mission. Maybe she was intended to be part of the experiment but there's no evidence to support this. If you look at a similar parallel Yui had no problem bringing Shinji to her Contact Experiment. Maybe they both wanted to show their children a bright future. I dunno but I don't know if she had anything to do with it and I don't think she was involved because if she had been in whatever cavern they bore in the ice to see Adam she wasn't in it when they began the Experiment.


	5. Gehirin & Project E

**Gehirin**

Gehirn is the underground organization from which Nerv was born, or became, and was tasked with: the development of Evangelions, Magi Supercomputers, Nerv HQ and Tokyo-3 while it was under construction. The organization was commissioned as a "non-existent" group under the supervision of the United Nation but in reality it was the early brain child of Seele. Its project leader was Gendo Ikari and the chief scientist was Dr. Nakoto Akagi. It is unknown exactly when Gehirn was formed but it seems to have been created shortly after or before the Second Impact because of the fact that Dr. Katsurgai was involved in finding Adam and let's face it Seele has a finger in just about everything but at the very least it was in operation at the latest by 2003. After finishing the construction of Tokyo-3 in 2010 it renamed itself to Nerv.

The E-Project was conducted at the United Nations Artificial Evolution Laboratory. The United Nations Artificial Evolution Laboratory was a research complex located in Hakone, the site where Tokyo-3 was constructed, "under UN control" built to research the mysterious "Giant of Light" or "Adam" which appeared in Antarctica and carry out Project E, which is basically the creation of Evangelions. Essentially all you need to know is that Gendo Ikari and his wife were in charge, the Evangelions began here and this was what Nerv HQ was built around.

**Project E**

The Adam Revival Project where the Ultimate All-Purpose Humanoid Decisive Battle Weapon: Evangelion come from or were a result of. Please keep in mind as you read that this is a work of fiction that is shrouded in mystery and fed to us in bits and pieces so what I have recorded here is based on a method that I employ a lot in the real world that I encourage you all to use **The S.W.A.G. Method** (**S**cientific **W**ild **A**ss **G**uess).

Evangelions are kind of strange in the fact that they have no fixed size shown in the show and seem to adapt to the situation (going from building height to absolutely fucking enormous) most were created from the Seed of Life Adam with the seeming exception of Eva-01 which seems to be in a class of its own. They are a biological creature with a suit of armor wrapped around them, possessing what could be considered to be a human form except of course the fact that they had exaggerated upper body with limbs that were adherent to what is acceptable human proportions.

While that might not seem like it's such a big deal there is something wrong with people who have limbs that are not in proportion to what we view as an acceptable spectrum for a human body. Let's face it, it is an uncontrollable instinctual response to be at the very least freaked out by someone or something with exaggerated limbs because of the fact that it doesn't fit into our range of what is expected from a human. It's not something that we can control as it is established before the age of three unless you were raised by wolves or something and didn't have any experience with your own species.

Moving on.

The Evangelions are not formed of the same things that we are, and I don't been cells and tissues and organs and organ systems, they aren't composed of what we would consider normal matter. Their subatomic structure is completely different meaning that they aren't made up of quarks or any of the six flavors: up, down, strange, charm, bottom, or top which make up atoms (yes I am aware that this isn't all that there is to them but that's all that I can recall and restate with any accuracy so I'm leaving at that because the science behind matter is a pain in the ass to explain and because Neon Genesis doesn't explain exactly how the matter they are made of differs from what we are used to seeing I can't exactly explain the difference here). So anyway Evangelions are made of the same substance as Angels, "Adam", "Lillith" Rei and Kaworu are composed of: Particle-Wave Matter. The Particle-Wave Matter of Angels appears to be particles with a non-zero rest mass – not massless like light, photons, but closer to a neutrino in mass. That, however, doesn't mean that Angels weigh next to nothing because their bulk has done some serious damage to the landscape.

According to Ritsuko Akagi this type of matter is characterized by particle and wave properties, like light saying _"Angels are made up of a strange substance that has properties of both a wave and a particle, just like light. (…) Even though they're made up of a different material, their signal distribution and coordinates are strikingly similar to human DNA, 99.98% similar."_

That's fucking scary when you only consider the genome variation from one person to another can only be up to .5%, meaning that you are only at most 99.5% different from the rest of the population. When you factor in that Chimpanzees, our closest genetic relatives, are 96-98% similar to humans you see something that is frightening that those giant biological machines are closer to you than anything and everything else in the world and the only thing that makes humans different is that we aren't as big and the fact that sexual reproduction, instead of something like budding, allows for mutations to thrive or die.

So let's strip away the fact that humans aren't exactly identical by finding the least common denominator. This process is possible because you inherit mitochondrial DNA from your mother which is a perfect copy of hers which is a perfect copy of her mothers and so on and so forth. Sure you could use other types of DNA but let's use mitochondrial because it would take less time to explain and it would just be easier to do. Line up the mitochondrial DNA of every person on the planet and start removing every bit of coding that is different and you're left with everything that is the same. The end result is an ancestral mother (READ: "Lillith") of all humans on the planet. If you compared that to an Evangelion's it would be only .02% different. What does that mean?

That means ladies and gentlemen who could keep up is that if you have an identical twin, which doesn't mean genetically identical as recent science has proven, this giant machine might actually be closer to you genetically than your twin is.

That's a scary ass thought. There but for a flip of a coin go we moment much.

Let's rein it back in now and focus on their bodies,

Anyway because they are indeed artificial constructs instead of natural despite the fact that they are alive they have no souls and because they have no souls they have no A.T. Field. So to combat this, their souls are inserted into them in a Contact Experiment with a human being. More on that later on.

Evangelions also are incapable of generating an S2 Engine like Angels, although Unit-01 eats Zeruel's and incorporates it into its own body and the Mass Production Evangelions from the End of Evangelion are built with one.

What is an S2 Engine?

Well an S2 (Super Solenoid) Engine is actually an organ found in an Angel that basically is its source of power. How it accomplishes this I really have no idea but I guess that it works kind of like perpetual motion if it were actually possible. Let me explain in a way that might make some people smile and other people say animal cruelty but because perpetual motion is impossible and this is just an example shut your mouths: going on the assumption in a perfect world that a cat thrown from any height will land on its feet if I taped two cats back to back and threw them off of a roof because of the asymptote created mathematic equation f(x)=k/x shows that as the cats approach the ground they will decelerate until they overcome the force of gravity at which point it will float and all downwards pull would force it into a spinning motion, this model only fails if the cats come apart. Allied logically if there was something like two spinning cats inside of an S2 Engine it would power an Angel or Evangelion.

Why Evangelions don't have S2 Engines is because they are not born with one because they really aren't born with them at all. The name comes from Dr. Katsuragi's who intended to make an actual S2 Engine based on "Adam's" power source but we all know that the poor bastard died before he got a chance. While attempts were made to reproduce an S2 Engine at Nerv's Second Branch in Nevada and install it into Eva-04, let's just say that the Eva, The Second Branch, the Facilities, and everything within 101 mile diameter disappeared and was replaced by an ultra-thin space supported by an inwardly-directed AT Field that is believed to be connected to another universe called a Dirac Sea, it's a dimensional pocket that is impossible to escape (referenced in Episode 16 when Shinji is pulled into the "shadow" of the angel. Ritsuko calls this space a Dirac Sea). Anyway the offsite back up was preserved in Germany where the project continues ultimately producing the nine Mass Production Evangelions that curb stomped Asuka in Episode 26 and the End of Evangelion.

There were several failed Prototype Evangelions that I assume they had to kill with fire judging by the horrible stains left on the floor when Ritsuko showed Shinji the graveyard.

Strangely enough they bleed red, with the exception of Unit-02 which bleeds blue-purple, and have internal organs including a complete digestive tract, shown during the dismemberment of Unit-02. Fingernails shown in Episode 3 and toes seen in the End of Evangelion. Like Angels Evangelions have cores and seem to have regenerative capabilities though not as extreme as the Angels, they seem to have a limb or in some cases a head torn off and reattached later but when Unit-02's leg is ripped off at the knee and sinks into the bottom of the Volcano in Episode 10, which is beyond recovery (the pressure destroying all unmanned vessels though it is possible that they managed to retrieve it with Unit-01 although considering the heat and the possibilities that it sunk until it was destroyed by the heat of the core I would say it was pretty much gone for good), it is shown was a fully repaired left leg. It's not likely that Nerv has extra parts just lying around and to grow them to the correct size each time they are removed and not reattached would be a pain in the ass. It is not known how long or difficult the process of an Evangelion regrowing its own limb is but when Unit-00 is shown in Episode 19 it didn't hae time to grow a new left arm.

What we do know for sure is that they are covered in bindings that restrain them and keep them under control and are basically locked down and in cold storage when not being used. In the Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance when a fourth Evangelion is brought to Nerv HQ for startup and testing one of the units already at the base has its core removed completely (which raises questions about removing the core from Unit-01 because it is shown to have three).

Because of their apparently violent and unpredictable nature when turned loose an entirely different brain is place in charge of the Evangelion, cutting off all of the signals that the brain sends to the body by way of the Entry Plug which is inserted into the spine of the Evangelion. The pilot essentially jacks their central nervous system into this enormous body which is the main reason why I believe that only one person (we're excluding Rei because she's not humans) can pilot a particular Evangelion with relative ease. Sure there's the whole soul thing but I'll get to that later.

The fact that the pilot takes the place of the central nervous system for the Evangelion is also the reason why the pilot experiences the physical pain of the injuries. Instead of the signal for pain being transmitted directly to the giant you're riding in, because by injecting yourself you made yourself _its_ brain so **your** brain feels it. The higher your synchronization the greater the effect of the injuries you sustain, kind of like a mind over matter thing where the injury makes itself apparent on your body although you did not sustain the damage. That doesn't mean that you won't die though, in Episode 19 the synchronization between Asuka and Unit-02 is cut moments before Zeruel decapitates Unit-02, we can safely assume that the pain and shock would've killed her.


	6. Unit 00 & Rei Ayanami

**Unit 00**

Not much is known about this Unit except for the fact that it is the first working Evangelion and was later equipped for combat. It is known that in 2003 Fuyutsuki sees a model of Unit-00 with the same white and orange combination and same head design. I personally do not believe that the unit marked the perfection of the creation process for two reasons: one) during the activation experiment with Rei it went berserk and two) during the interchangeability experiment with Shinji it went berserk. It does that more than any other unit.

All we know for certain is that Rei is the pilot and since all the pilots operate a machine in which their mother's soul is placed that leaves a question. Whose soul is in Unit-00?

There are several answers… but it's a guessing game.

The fact that the soul inside of Unit-00 isn't Rei's mother might just be the reason that the fact that that it acts up. I mean the thing has tried to attack several people, various times: Gendo, Dr. Ritsuko, and its pilot. Is it because Rei has no soul? Is it because Rei is a clone?

What the hell are you looking at me for, I don't know.

But I can guess and tell you the three most popular theories over time, though two have fallen into heavy debate but haven't been disregarded because people stand by them.

During the interchangeability experiment Shinji sees what he thinks is Rei while synchronized by ends up saying "…isn't it her?" which basically means that what he is seeing isn't the Rei he knows. Rei also speaks of "the me inside the Eva". Which is strange but I'll get to that later and go into one of the disfavored theories.

_Eva-00 Has no Soul_

It has been said that Unit-00 has no soul and the fact that it works at all is because Rei is a vessel for "Lillith's" Soul which basically means she doesn't have to follow the rules because she's special. This is supported by the fact that Kaworu possesses "Adam's" soul and was able to synchronize with Unit-02 without it being reconfigured. It has also been said that Rei has somehow put an image of her soul inside of the core in order to function as the pilot and that this is what Shinji sees in Episode 14.

That's all well and good but Ritsuko is very clear in Episode 23 that an Evangelion absolutely _**requires**_ a human soul to function and that the Evas came from "Adam" and not from "Lillith". That puts an end to that theory.

_Unit-00 Has Naoko Akagi's Soul_

At one time it was the accepted theory, that Ritusko's mother was the soul inside of Unit-00 based on who was standing behind the glass (Gendou and Rei) when Unit-00 forgot how to perform the Falcon Punch and just hit the glass instead of blowing everyone away. Naoko hated Gendo because he's a self-absorbed using bastard who only cared about a woman who was just like him but died and fooled her into thinking that he loved her (because she looks similar to Yui). It could have been that Unit-00 wanted to smash Ritsuko because she was having an affair with Gendou at the time and Naoko might have seen her as competition because that's how she rolled.

During The End of Evangelion the Magi supercomputer Casper, which is based on the female personality of Naoko, sided with Gendo over Ritsuko. So basically if the soul belonged to her this could be interpreted as an attack on Ritsuko. However, we could rule out her soul being used because of the poor compatibility with Rei I. After all she viewed Rei I as competition of sorts for Gendou's affections which actually would explain why Unit-00 tried to kill Rei II in Episode 14 if you ignore Ritsuko's statement that she was the target. It gives no explanation why Rei was able to synchronize with her and doesn't explain Shinji's vision.

And the fact that all other pilots (who managed synchronization) except for Mari who manages synchronization by forcing it with some device she carries on her wrist, and Kaworu are in Units that possess their mother's soul. Which is completely out there because if that were the case than Ritsuko would be the pilot but she's too damn old.

_Unit-00 Has Rei's Soul_

This is the accepted theory because it just seems to fit as well as it can in this awkwardly shaped piece in the jigsaw puzzle. It has been established and confirmed that all three versions of Rei have Lillith's soul. Well we can all agree that Rei I is dead and in the beginning Rei II is alive and well and interacting with everyone even though it's awkward at best, so how could her soul be in Unit-00? The answer is presented to us indirectly by Asuka's mother. Unlike Shinji's mother who was completely absorbed into Unit-01 body and soul, Asuka's mother underwent some process that removed only a portion of her soul (the maternal aspects) during the contact experiment with Unit-02. She was alive and conscious even if she eventually was driven clinically insane and took her own life she established that you can lose a part of your soul and live.

So the theory works on the assumption that a portion, let's say most, of Rei I's soul was put inside Unit-00 while the rest was put inside the clone Rei II. That would explain why she is so detached from the world but because of the fact that she isn't exactly human she didn't go insane or just didn't have enough time to be drive insane before she died. This is further supported by the fact that Unit-00 is unbalanced and the fact that Shinji sees the image of Rei but without the aspects that she possesses which would make them two distinct entities.

Some people argue that Rei I was killed as a child but appears to Shinji as a teenager but considering that her soul was not complete who is to say that it didn't mature as time goes on?

Now that would help explain Unit-00's berserk incidents, Rei I would be resentful of the fact that she was killed and strikes out at people because of it: Gendou because he imprisoned her in the Core, Ritsuko because her mother killed her or she sees Ritsuko as Naoko herself and the fact that she would know whose soul was inside the Evangelion.

Hell Rei II actually confirms that there's some part of her inside of Unit-00 when she questions "Is this me? The me inside the Eva?" in Episode 23. After Unit-00 self-destructed and Rei III was created she was in a position to possess both portions of the soul that was ripped in half though this is only evidenced by a difference in behavior between Rei II and Rei III though Rei III's personality is closer to Rei II's than what we know about Rei I's (though this could be because Rei I was shown as a child and things change about people) but that could also be resentment over being forced back into an artificial frame instead of the original.

The mutual compatibility experiment in Episode 14 has been said to confirm the theory, the intention was to see if Shinji was compatible with Unit -00 and Rei with Unit-01 because Rei is connected with both Yui and "Lillith"(herself) and should be able to use either unit. To make this look more realistic instead of just announcing their intentions to the world Shinji was put inside Unit-00.

**Rei Ayanami**

Okay Vivian, tell me what the hell is Rei because you've stated over and over again that she isn't human?

Um… special.

Officially on record Rei Ayanami is the First Child and the exclusive pilot of Unit-00, a fourteen year old girl who is unusual for her age (living alone in a horribly kept apartment), who attends school at the Junior High with an unusual appearance.

I mean blue hair, pale skin, and red eyes, she stands out, like badly and people in canon comment on it. She's a mystery even to people who know her she's disconnected from the most broken bunch of people in the series (the pilots) in her own special way. She'd withdraw, cool, aloof, confused about emotions because she's detached from her own, she has no value in her existence, she places value on other people and seems to worship Gendo who deserves the worst father ever award although she eventually chooses Shinji over him.

Well officially before her enrollment in Tokyo-3 Junior High she didn't exist anywhere on record because Rei Ayanami is a clone of Yui Ikari that incorporated bits of "Lillith's" DNA as well as holds "Lillith's" soul. How they managed to get the soul out of "Lillith" is completely unknown because she is like Kaworu but now in the sense that she was created between 2004 and 2008 chronologically and not at the moment that someone (Yui) made contact with "Lillith" because she is a clone.

Yeah, she's a mind fuck.

The reason that she was created was to have a controllable link between Gendo and "Lillith" because he intended to use Human Instrumentality to see Yui again and this may be the reason that she is a clone of Yui because the man has issues.

Not only is she a clone containing the soul of an alien, oh and not the first clone either we are one Rei III by the end of the series. Rei I was seen as a child and was murdered by Naoko Akagi for telling her that Gendo called her "old hag" behind her back. Rei II was the first one introduced in the anime and seems to have a strong attachment to Gendo like Rei I did. Rei III turned into a Giant Naked White Thing with Kaworu Sticking Out of the Back of Her For A Minute There (GNWTKSOBHFAMT) and had an attachment to Shinji.

They even keep spares in the basement just encase the current Rei dies and to make up the Dummy Plug system. Rei's birthplace is Central Dogma, shown in Episode 23, which looks like Rei's apartment and is likely where Rei spent what few early years she had.

There's a lot more that could go here about how freaking weird she is but I'll save what's important for the Third Impact and leave the rest alone.


	7. Unit 01 & The Ikaris

**Unit-01**

Unit-01 is piloted by Shinji Ikari and possesses the soul of his mother, Yui Ikari, and is the first Test Type Combat Able model produced by Gehirn before it changed its name. Unlike the other Evangelions it (genetically female) was born directly from the body of "Lillith" and is referred to as her offspring or clone although on a physical level it looks like "Adam" based Evangelions so its exact nature and connection with "Lillith" is subject to debate. This is the only one Unit to begin a contact experiment but not have the process completed for another ten years.

There is a lot of speculation about what exactly is the difference between Unit-01 and all the rest because it was created from "Lillith" instead of "Adam" but using my trusty S.W.A.G. method combined with the oh so sophisticated T.L.A.R. (That Looks About Right) combined with what information that can be gleaned from what is shown in the show, which I have been doing a lot to get this explanation to you so you can enjoy the series as much as I do.

My guess is that Unit-01 possesses a genetic code identical to "Lillith" with the body form and core of an "Adam" based Evangelion – although there is no way the Unit-02 can be created in the same manner as Unit-01. That enabled to have Unit-01 gain "Lillith's" metaphysical "Fruit of Knowledge". This may be the reason that Gendo treats it with favoritism or it could be because it was designed intentionally to be a weapon to be used against Angels and was first to be used against Angels.

It is also infamous for going berserk and moving without a power supply before eating the S2 Engine out of Zeruel. It is also infamous for being the only Unit that has gone berserk in direct combat and being the only Unit that did go berserk in the field without serious consequences (although one could argue that if the Mass Produced Units in the End of Evangelion didn't pull a "god mod" out of their asses and come back to life than Unit-02 would have won and successfully gone berserk without serious consequences but it still doesn't count because of what happens to Asuka immediately after).

Once all of the Angels are destroyed Unit-01 becomes the king-pin in both Gendo and Seele's plans for the Thrid Impact. The former intended to use it as an ark to save humanity from Third Imapct and see his wife and the latter intended to become a super powerful being instead of "Lillith" who was rendered useless because her Spear was lost or absorbed or something when it but "Adam" into stasis.

Anyway from its unique construction we can safely assume that Unit-01 was intended to be a back-up or replacement "Lillith".

What we know about the soul inside Unit-01 is mostly evidence given subtly and conclusions drawn from it. So let's get down to

**Yui, Gendo, and Shinji**

Yui Ikari became the soul inside Unit-01 and the inspiration for creating Rei and because of this her son was selected to be the pilot. While her exact motivations for becoming the soul of Unit-01 is not completely understood what is is that towards the end of her human life she was against Seele's wishes and was under threat of being eliminated. She could have possibly foreseen or concluded that the Evangelions were being used for battle and became the resident soul to prevent that from happening which they overcame by using the one person she couldn't reject: her son.

Anyway Yui is the daughter of a prominent member of Seele which leads me to believe that she was used in an effort to gain the influence of an obsessed man for the Seele's gain. My evidence is that Gendo was interested in Seele and wanted in bad enough to display the obsessive compulsive nature of his soul, the fact that he would do anything to achieve his goals. During his search for a way in he found Yui who in turn told her parent who saw the traits that Gendo possessed would be beneficial and told her to seduce him and lure him in. In effect they were both used for the gain of an organization that though that it could be God.

What they didn't expect was for Gendo and Yui to fall in love with one another and be as, if not more, obsessively possessively devoted to one another as they were the project. This is based on the evident work that the both of them put into making Gehirn and Nerv successful, Gendo by leading relatively well and Yui by actually creating the Evangelions (or at least Unit-00) thus becoming known as "The Mother of Evangelions". That takes some serious dedication.

My entire theory is based on the fact that her parent didn't tell her everything because if my parents came to me and told me that they wanted to fuse their consciousness with their power hungry friends and become God and they needed by degree in metaphysical biology to do it I would have a fit. That is just not cool. If her parent didn't tell her and she found out only after she had created this "god like being" that she could possibly have a hand in sabotaging it would only be reasonable that she feared for her life so she agreed to be the test subject for the Contact Experiment, knowing that if it worked her consciousness and her soul would be in a place to prevent her parent from succeeding and protect her son if necessary.

After all Unit-01 was designed to fight Angels and the next-best weapon is an N2 (Non Nuclear) warhead and all it does is give them the angelic equivalent of a skin rash and piss them off what can you really do to stop her? All she had to do was reject every pilot that stepped up to try Unit-01 on for size.

Simple right?

It worked. And maybe to say goodbye or maybe hoping that he would understand she brought the four year old Shinji to the experiment site and in a "freak accident" her soul was absorbed into the Unit-01's core instead of whatever else was supposed to happen. At the time Gehirn was working on the creation of artificial souls which most likely aided in removing "Lillith's" soul, the contact experiments from then on out, and the Dummy Plug system. Long story short she reverted to LCL (primordial ooze that for some reason you can breathe in and not drown and is also the blood of "Lillith") and became the first person to be Taangafied.

Afterwards Gendo tried to retrieve her by trying to recreate her body and fix her soul back into it but instead ended up with Rei somehow. Instead of grieving for his wife he set out on a quest to be with her again and basically shoved his son away from him forgetting that he existed until it suited his needs.

Needless to say watching his mother "die" and having his father disappear for all intents and purposes royally fucked over Shinji which is why he is like he is. He has issues because his parents were involved with an ideologically based group and instead of caring about his son afterwards Gendo threw him away. In the young mind of Shinji his mother was dead and his father hated him so that automatically meant that no one cared about him in the slightest so he grew up conflicted and in need of some serious psychological help but of course he didn't get it. But then that's the running theme with the two "human" pilots.

So basically instead of doing what was originally planned Gendo intended to bring about the Third Impact and create a haven for humans souls inside Unit-01 so that his soul would have a place to go when his body was taanged so that he could see his wife again. 1+1=2.

Because of the trauma he experienced as a child he never really could depend on others and instead of learning how to depend on himself and be confident in his choices Shinji became completely helpless. As fucking annoying as it is you add that to the teenage angst experienced at fourteen and you have a recipe for one of the most annoying anime protagonists ever.


	8. Unit 02 & Asukas

**Unit 02**

Unit-02 is the third Evangelion completed and the first Production Model built after modifying the design of Unit-01 to be more suited for battle. It is the first "true" Evangelion for combat against the Angels because Unit-01 is created from "Lillith" and not "Adam".

It's pretty straight forward as far as Evangelion's go and the least interesting in terms of creation because it isn't the first and it isn't created from "Lillith" making it capable of things others aren't. What is unique besides the color and face is the fact that it enters a state of elevated power similar to berserk mode when Asuka achieves a high synch ratio during the following battle Asuka takes physical sympathetic damage, in The Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance Mari also enters a controlled berserk mode and takes sympathetic damage, and it is the only Evangelion to actually die!

Yeah, you read that right Unit-02 actually dies. In the End of Evangelion when Asuka achieves that ridiculously high synch ration after the power dies the Mass Production Units pull a "god mod" and proceed to mutilate and disembowel Unit-02. It goes into a strange kind of variation of the unpowered berserk state before being impaled, the last of which strikes the core. And its eyes stare lifelessly up at the sky so yeah… it died. So it shows the Evangelions can die and it also shows that they have a complete digestion tract, so it was kind of important.

Anyway there is something else rather unique about Unit-02 that is a feature we think is shared with Unit-00. During the contact experiment with Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu (or Shikimani in the Rebuild) they channeled only her maternal instincts into the core of the Evangelion which actually screwed up little Asuka pretty bad.

Anyway at some point after her death Kyoko's soul came together after her suicide in Unit-02 although it remained fractured proof of this is provided during Episode 25 Asuka learns her mother is inside Unit-02 as Kyoko repeats "You mustn't die! You must live! You're alive!" while a familiar "Please die with me!" is head in Episode 22 and Episode 25 during flashbacks and mixed in with the inspirational words.

**Asuka **

_As Asuka Langely Soryu_

Asuka as she appears in both Neon Genesis and The End of Evangelion is a very independent person who grew up entirely too fast because of the trauma she suffered when her mother suddenly stopped caring about her, went insane, and eventually killed herself but not before asking Asuka to kill herself. Her father wanted nothing to do either her mother or her (are you sensing a pattern here say horrible parents much). Her world became all about me and no one will help me and I have to do this myself which I believe is the motivation that led to her graduate from college at thirteen with a degree that she doesn't specify. Although she is seen later attending school in order to learn kanji despite the fact that she speaks Japanese, German and we can assume American English because her nationality is America fluently.

She is a very demanding child that always has to put herself above others and make others notice her because of her sad childhood growing up essentially alone so from the moment that she saw Shinji and confirmed that he was a pilot she wanted to show off Unit-02.

Asuka loves to pilot Unit-02 because it gets people to pay attention and makes her feel powerful, something that most likely hadn't experienced previously. She's so proud of this fact that she constantly wears the Interface Headset even when she's in a swimming pool ect. Despite her bravado she's just as screwed as Shinji, people didn't really take notice of her until she started piloting and as such she is unable to identify herself without Unit-02.

She is so dependent on her ability to pilot an Evangelion that after the very literal mindfuck (in which she was forced to relieve her childhood and then being rescued by Rei) she experienced at the "hands" of Zeruel in Episode 19 it devastates her so much to she ended up in a near comatose state in which she cared about nothing.

Her freedom eventually comes just before the Third Impact but she is curb stomped after five minutes and returns in a state of shock most likely as a result from the physical pain of being disemboweled only to have Shinji begin to strangle her.

_As Asuka Shikinami Langley_

Asuka is the only character who is seriously revamped for the Rebuild of Evangelion and I mean that more than just her surname and hair color was changed. Her personality is noticeably different, I mean she talks and plays with a freaking hand puppet (while Asuka Soryu had a deep hatred for dolls) when she is feeling low. She is seen trying to impress Shinji (whom she called either "Daddy's boy" or "stupid shinji") and being jealous of Rei ("commander's pet) because she gets more attention but doesn't display any interest in Kaji (who Soryu pursued to show that she was more "mature"). And despite the fact that she sees them both as rivals in piloting and Rei as a romantic rival she warms up to them during the course of 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance to the point where she agrees to be the test pilot for Unit-03 so that Rei can hold a dinner party in an effort to bring Gendo and Shinji together.

Unlike Soryu, Shikinami confides in Misato that she's never had or needed friend and prefers to be alone although she has gained the value of human contact and friends.


	9. The Age of the Pilots

**The Age of the Pilots**

An Angel is a creature made from the bits of "Adam's" baby batter that flew all around the world during the Katsuragi Expedition. What they really want with Nerv is unknown, it could either be to destroy "Lillith" who lies dormant at the bottom of Nerv's base or it could be that they are drawn to the active Evangelions because like calls to like. Honestly what they want isn't important and what they're doing isn't important what is important is that were ever they go there is serious damage.

In fact they do so much damage that a major metropolis, Tokyo-3, was designed to retreat underground into the relative safety of the Geo-Front to prevent them from killing too many people. Compound that with the fact that engaging the Angels causes even more damage both collateral and human we can safely assume that it is a moral and ethical responsibility to see that the Angels are destroyed.

So why is that fourteen year old children are tasked with the job of piloting biological puppets to destroy the one single greatest to the immediate extinction of man-kind? All joking aside they really could have chosen someone else, some other age group, like old enough to join the Armed Forces age group but they didn't and I think I have a reason why based on biology and the behavior of breeding warm-blooded female animals.

Nature has demonstrated shown us that female animals are more aggressive towards threats to their offspring than male animals until they eventually run their offspring off because they can fend for themselves or until they are old enough to join the group. The only exception to this is maybe elephants, some species of monkeys and of course human mothers who will try and baby their forty year old sons and daughters.

The point behind this is that Shinji and Asuka fall into that no mans land between childhood and adulthood that people call adolescence: the final growth spurt, sexual maturity and beyond that emotional maturity. But there is something inherently wrong with the psychological well-being of all three of our pilots (Shinji, Asuka and Rei) that has basically frozen then emotionally and mentally as, for lack of a better word, a child in need of protection.

Where does protection come from for most warm blooded species on the planet especially mammals, you guessed right you mother (well personally for me my father but that's beside the point). Other animals just do not make good father with the exception of some species including all raptors, pigeons, ostriches, ect. And no one has had a strong positive parental influence in the show; even the adults whose back story is hinted at have issues with their parents or are in some way broken.

I believe that the process started when Yui decided that she was going to keep them from using their new toy, Unit-01, and they decided fuck it we'll make another one. When that other one was complete and there still wasn't a confirmed pilot Gendo or Seele must've decided to exploit the natural undeniable instinct to protect your offspring that exists within most people. I bother hedging most people because the people who abuse and kill their children were never really parents, they were just donors. Because her son was in life threatening danger Yui synchronized with him to protect him.

That is harder to fit into place with Asuka's mother but it is possible, Kyoko must have known that Evangelions do not work without a soul (they would be unable to produce an A.T. Field and the pilot needs theirs to protect them from Accidental Instrumentality {tangification}). Asuka and Shinji are the same age so either Gendo or Seele was like plug Asuka in it works, after seeing that Unit-01 activated for Shinji. That is if Unit-02 was not turned on until after Unit-01 which I believe to be true because if it was on and working and Asuka already spoke Japanese why wasn't she already in Japan?


	10. Episodes 1 to 6 What Happened

**Episodes 1 to 6**

Prior to the beginning of Neon Genesis Evangelion Gendo calls his wayward son Shinji to Tokyo-3 and he arrives at the beginning of Episode 1 in a nearby town to find it a ghost town. While he is waiting for his ride, Mitsato, to pick him up the local military attacks as the Third Angel, Sachiel, comes around a nearby hill with explosives but Misato arrives just in time to rescue him for the first time. Conventional weapons, even the mighty N2, prove useless against the Angel and the military is out of options. Shinji arrives at the Geofront and is brought to the Evangelion hanger where he sees Unit-01, Gendo appears and tells him that he was summoned to fight the Angels but Shinji refuses. With no other option, and perhaps knowing that Shinji wouldn't refuse to fight, Gendo calls for Rei to fight. A blast from the battle on the surface knocks over the gurney that Rei is wheeled in on and almost kills Shinji but Unit-01 saves him after which he runs to Rei and agrees to pilot Unit-01. He is loaded into the entry plug, synchronizes and is sent to the surface.

Episode 2 begins with the battle Unit-01 vs Sachiel the Third Angel. Well because Shinji doesn't know what he's doing he falls: has his right eye damaged and his left arm broken (please note fact that he has become the "brain" of this new machine and as such he feels the pain as if _his_ arm has been broken). So basically he loses and loses consciousness and wakes up in an empty hospital room. Gendo discusses the appearance of Angels and is told to make sure that the Human Instrumentality Project continues on schedule. Shinji moves into Misato's apartment. Gendo says that he will continue to have children pilot because he's a cold hearted bastard. Shinji has flashbacks of the battle during which Nerv loses control of the Evangelion and it basically goes primal on the Sachiel. We see during the course of this battle that Unit-01's left arm heals at an incredible rate and destroys the Angel with relative ease.

At the beginning of Episode 3 three weeks have passed since episode one and Shinji enrolled in school and is still pretty useless as a pilot. At school he meets Kensuke Aida, Toji Suzuhara, Hikari Horaki and begins to interact with Rei Ayanami. Toji has only just returned to school and blames Shinji because his sister was hurt in the battle with the Third Angel and beats up Shinji because of it, when Shinji says he didn't have a choice he hits him harder. The Fourth Angel, Shamshel, appears and Shinji is forced to go into battle but the it doesn't go in his favor because he loses his nerve. At the time Kensuke and Toji decided they want to watch the battle with the angel because they're stupid and are almost crushed by Unit-01 as it goes airborn. To protect them Shinji is told to let them into the Entry Plug and Shinji charges the Angel and wins. Toji gets over himself.

Episode 4 begins five days after Episode 3 and Shinji isn't back at school because he's slipped into depression so he rides the train all day listening to his in world equivalent of an iPod, spends the night in a movie theatre and runs away to the countryside. Shinji meets Kensuke who is out in the country and reveals that he's jealous of Shinji to which he says Kensuke's mother would be worried, they camp together overnight. Nerv comes and basically arrests Shinji and he's drug back to be reprimanded for being such a whiny bitch and tell him they don't need a pilot that's such a whinny bitch so they take him to the train station. Gendo orders Unit-01 reconfigured for Rei. Shinji runs into Toji who tells him that he should hit him back to make up for Toji beating him up, it ends with Toji telling Shinji that he's weak and a coward. Misato finally realizes that Shinji needs a stable family and rushes to the train station and makes it in time. He hasn't left.

Episode 5 begins with a flashback of the activation experiment for Unit-00 where Rei was injured, it shows that Gendo has a special place in his heart for Rei. Back in the present Ritsuko tells Misato that the mental instability of the pilot (that's a crock because they're all broken) was the cause of the accident. Later Misato, Ritsuko and Shinji are present during the examination of Shamshel's remains and we learn that angels are made of a different kind of matter that that their DNA is 99.8% the same as humans. Shinji observes the only time Rei doesn't act like a robot – when talking to Gendo. Misato asks Shinji to deliver Rei's new ID card, he finds the place a mess and Rei comes out of the shower or something naked and seems more concerned about him trying on his father's glasses than being naked. He trips and they fall into a heap upsetting Rei's underwear drawer. She gets dressed and heads to HQ without talking to him, they get there and he gives her the new ID card, when he denounces his father she slaps him. They do a reactivation test and it's successful. The fifth Angel, Ramiel, attacks. Rei isn't ready to fight so Shinji gets sent out, is almost boiled alive, they pull him back down.

Episode 6 begins right after with Shinji hospitalized, the front of Unit-01's armor melted. Ramiel settled over Nerv HQ and starts drilling downward. Only hours remain before it will enter the Geofront so they come up with a desperate plan. Using a positron beam fried from just outside it's attack zone, to pierce the A.T. Field they have to jack all the power from Japan and have Rei act as a shield for Shinji with a shield made from a spaceshuttle that will last seventeen seconds. When Shinji regains consciousness he pulls a "I'm not a competent pilot" again and Rei tells him she can do it herself. They end up on this mission together and somehow the Angel fires on them at the same moment that they fire on him and they both miss. The Angel attacks again before Shinji can fire, Rei steps in and suffers damage, Shinji kills the angel, Shinji then forces the entry plug from Unit-00 and opens the hatch. Rei is unharmed, she smile sat him.

**What Happened**

It's a basic framework where information is given to us either directly or abstractly but what we learned is:

Shinji has been put in a position of very little power beyond the fighting Angels

Gendo has absolutely no love for his son whatsoever and only tolerates him because he can pilot but only if he will pilot

Gendo and Rei have some strange kind of relationship going on because Rei is basically a cyborg with no emotions unless she is around him or he is mentioned in a conversation

No one has properly trained Shinji on how to use an Evangelion besides the basics so it's a learn as you go process

All of the angels are different with different powers and abilities

Old scifi concepts exist (positron rifle)

The Evangelions are not impervious but seem to heal and/or are repaired quickly


	11. Episodes 7 to 13 What Happened & TheMagi

Episode 7 begins with Gendo talking to someone asks if what he should do about some other matter and Gendo tells him to leave it. The budget has been approved to build more Evangelions. Shinji is told about what really happened in Antarctica and that his mission is to prevent the Third Impact. Some company comes up with an Angel fighting robot called Jet Alone and it basically goes out of control while Misato and Ritsuko are viewing the demonstration. Its nuclear reactor goes critical and Misato decides to enter the Jet Alone in a radiation suit with the help of Unit-01 and delete it's programming but there's a problem with that: there's a delay in the time it takes her to get the deletion code and the password fails. Misato decides to push the control robs back into the Jet Alone's reactor herself but they reinsert themselves which means it was never intended to melt down. They show Ritsuko telling Gendo that everything went as planned except Misato's intervention.

Episode 8 begins with another conversation between Gendo and an unknown person where we learn that something has left Sasebo and is headed their way. We see Shinji, Misato, Toji and Kensuke (Toji and Kensuke are tagging along as a cover) on their way to meet the U.N. Pacific Fleet which is transporting Unit-02 and its pilot to Tokyo-3. Asuka Langely Soryu is introduced as rather brash and over the top and describes Shinji as dull. We are introduced to Ryoji Kaji who Misato doesn't seem happy to see but Asuka does, he is apparently escorting Asuka to Japan from Germany (which is strange because Asuka's nationality is American). After lunch Kaji tells Asuka that Shinji had a 40% synch ration without training in a combat situation which surprises her so much she feels the need to show off Unit-02 to him. She explains the differences between the models as the sixth Angel, Gaghiel, attacks the fleet. Asuka forces Shinji to put on a plug suit and saddle up with her in battle but because there are two pilots on board Asuka has trouble starting Unit-02 telling him to think in German if he has to think at all which doesn't work so she switches to Japanese. Because Unit-02 has B-Type equipment it can't fight underwater so Asuka leaps from ship to ship until reaching her super extension cord and plugs herself in. The Angel knocks them overboard and she's almost swallowed, Kaji dips out on a fighter jet, and Misato comes up with a plan have Asuka and Shinji open the Angel's mouth (they have to work together to accomplish this) and have two ships fire point blank at its core and it works. The explosion buts Unit-02 back on the carrier's deck, Ritsuko looks at the data and tells Misato that they both broke their synch records while fighting, Kaji arrived at HQ with a brief case containing an embryo looking thing incased in an amber colored block (which is Bakelite or polyoxybenzylmethylenglycola nhydride {say that five times fast} which is an early plastic and a thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin) that turns out to be Adam and he's alive and growing. We learn that Adam was the Angel's real target. The next day at school Toji is telling Shinji how glad he is he won't be seeing Asuka but she is introduced as a new student just moments after.

Episode 9 beings with Asuka introducing herself to Rei. Kaji comes onto Ritsuko who seems to be used to his behavior and points out that Misato is watching. Misato wants to know why he is still in Japan and he claims he is on loan. The seventh Angel, Israfel, attacks and Shinji and Asuka sortie. Asuka bisects Israfel which turns out to be a mistake as the two halves come back as two separate angels. They are defeated and argue over whose fault it was, the U.N. bombs the holy living hell out of Isafel with N2s which managed to destroy a good enough portion of the Angel(s) that it has to regenerate over the course of several days buying them time. Kaji gives Misato the idea to destroy the Angel(s) with a coordinated simultaneous attack on each half of the Angel(s) core. To facilitate that Shinji and Asuka must be in synchronization with each other so Asuka moves in with Shinji and Misato and they undergo training that takes the form of Dance Dance Revolution on a twister mat but not really. Asuka shows her attraction to Kaji but he basically ignores her. Misato asks Rei to try with Shinji and they synchronize their movements on the first try. Humiliated Asuka runs out of the room. Asuka comes on to Shinji but he ignores her but later that night she sleepwalks into Shinji's room, Kaji gropes Misato in the elevator at work. Shinji and Asuka destroy the Angel in a coordinated battle to music, it works but after they destroy both cores they land in a heap and argue over whose fault it was.

Episode 10 begins with Asuka shopping with Kaji for a swimsuit for the up in coming school trip to Okinawa but it turns out they can't go because they're on standby and are instead told to study. At the pool (most likely in Nerv headquarters because Rei is present) we learn that Shinji has trouble with questions about thermal expansion and learn that Asuka has graduated from college already and the reason she is doing poorly in school is because she hasn't learned kaji yet so she can't read the questions. The eight Ange, Sandalphon, has been found in an active volcano still in an embryotic state (resembling a human embryo like Adam) and Gendo orders that Misato have the evangelions capture it before it hatches and starts destroying things. Asuka volunteers for the mission and would have backed up whens her realizes that the D-type Equipment needed looks like a fat suit but when Rei volunteers to go in her stead she agrees. Once they are on site Asuka dives into the magma, the external pressure begins to build and Asuka loses her knife. At 1780 meters she spots the Angel and captures it in a cage like device but it hatches into some sea serpent like creature and attacks her. Shinji throws down his knife but it's useless against the Angel so Asuka rips free her coolant hose and blasts the angel, the knife works and the angel explodes but not before it cuts the support cables that lowered Unit-02 and she begins to sink only to be saved by Shinji.

In episode 11 we learn that the Magi Supercomputers make the decisions that govern what happens not Nerv. Shinji asks his father to show up for a career interview at school and Gendo shoots him down essentially telling him that Misato is his mother now and to leave him alone. Power is cut off and all emergency power is channeled to the supercomputers and Central Dogma, Misato is stuck in an elevator with Kaji. Shinji, Asuka and Rei arrive to find that their cards won't open the gate and Gendo realizes that they have been sabotaged. The ninth Angel, Matarael, comes out of the ocean and heads for Tokyo-3. The pilots have to take a round about way to get into HQ and Ritsuko and Maya have to do the same thing to get to the control room. Shinji speculates on the nature of Angels but Asuka thinks that it's pointless and leads them through a door coming face to face with an angel. News has to come verbally through messenger that the Angel is attacking, Gendo orders the evangelions to be prepared for battle and the gang comes crashing out on a vent into the launch area finding the units almost ready for launch. Surprisingly Gendo is actually helping everyone manually insert the entry plugs with pulleys. The Angel is trying to burn its way into Nerv with a highly corrosive acid and in their first attempt at attacking they lose their guns so Asuka comes up with a plan that involves one unit neutralizing the acid with an A.T. Field, another unit throwing a gun to another unit that would open fire on the Angel while the other two run into a side shaft for shelter. It works. Shinji asks again what the Angels want and is shot down again.

Episode 12 begins with a flashback of Dr. Katsuragi pushing his daughter into an escape capsule, Adam is seen as a Giant of light with wings, a cloud vortex over Antarctica and the capsule floating to safety. We learn that Shinji's synch rate is increasing rapidly and he'll catch up with Asuka soon which only serves to upset her. Misato is promoted and at a party to celebrate Kaji arrives with Ritsuko causing Misato and Asuka to react like lovers scorned. Gendo and Fuyutsuki are seen on an aircraft carrier in a sea of red, incapable of sustaining life, and Fuyutsuki comments that it's truly a dead sea. On deck is a mysterious long object wrapped up so we can't see what it is. The tenth Angel, Sahaquiel, attacks with a very simple strategy drop itself on top of Nerv. It drops pieces of itself to Earth, each piece strangely has its own A.T. Field and causes a whole lot of damage when it hits the ground, and when it finds the right trajectory it drops itself down to Earth. Misato orders an evacuation of all civilians within a fifty kilometer radius and comes up with a ridiculous and impossibly plan, to have the evangelions catch the angel with their hands and A.T. fields at maximum power and destroy it. When Misato briefs the pilots on the mission they all decline to write a will and she promises them steak dinner if they succeed. Shinji asks Asuka why she pilots and she replies that she wants to prove something to the world and throws the question back at him but of course he doesn't have an answer. A flashback shows that Misato admits to Shinji that she joined Nerv to avenge her father even though she hated him. The time comes and all the evangelions race to ground zero, Shinji gets there first and struggles to hold the Angel until Rei and Asuka join him, Rei exposes the core and damages it with her knife and Asuka kills it causing the Angel to self-destruct. They did the damn near impossible and Gendo calls Misato and he congratulates her and has her connect him to Shinji and praises his son for the first time in her life. Instead of going for steak they go to a ramen house wherein Shinji tells Misato that he pilots because he wants to be praised by his father.

In Episode 13 we see the maintenance test of the Magi supercomputer system and a test for the pilots where they are put in a simulation evangelion without their plug suits. The test goes smoothly, Fuyutsuki is shown something that looks like stains on construction brought a few days ago but they are thought to be corrosion from trapped air bubbles, the corrosion is shown in the testing environment but Ritsuko has the test continue due to minor technical problems. The simulation begins and a contamination alert sounds as the corrosion spreads explosively, the test is aborted and several water pipes seal but it doesn't work. Rei screams and her simulation eva starts trying to break free of its restraints, all the pilots are ejected at once and the mass corrosion is fired upon with lasers but it deploys an A.T. field and thus they become aware that it is the eleventh Angel, Ireul. The shit hits the fan and a mass panic spreads, Central Dogma is closed off and all personnel has to evacuate the labs, Gendo cancels the alarm and tells the committee (Seele) and the Japanese government that it was an error in the alarm system after which he orders that the evangelions not be launched to avoid infection. Ritsuko and Misato attempt to destroy the Angel with excess oxygen but the Angel evolves and turns into a system of electronic circuits that attacks Nerv's supercomputers reprogramming the Magi (named Melchior) and attempting to initiate a self-destruct of the facility (why the hell you would program a computer to have a self-destruct mode is beyond me, I would just have a storage house of N2 in the basement and turn them on instead) but it is unable to get clearance and starts hacking into another of the supercomputers (named Balthasar) but a temporary firewall is set up that prevents the Angel from hacking for a while. Ritsuko explains that the Angel is a colony of microscopic entities working together and makes a plan to counter-hack the angel and program it to reach an evolutionary end. She goes into the physical body of the last Magi (Casper) and begins working with the notes her mother left. The Angel breaks through the firewall and infects Balthasar and one second to go before Casper is taken over the program is installed and the Magi are restored to normal working order. The Angel dies and Ritsuko tells Misato that the Magi are connected to her mother's personality.

**What Happened**

Well in episode 7 we learn that Gendo actively sabotages other programs so that only his fights angels. We learn in episode 8 that evangelions respond not to the spoken language of the pilot but the language that they think in which is rather interesting because while it is known that Asuka speaks more than one language, I mean "LCL Füllung. Anfang der Bewegung. Anfang des Nervenanschlusses. Auslöses von Links-kleidung. Synchro-start." (fun fact: Tiffany Grant, Asuka's English voice actress, actually speaks German so the English dub is a lot more fluid than any other dub except maybe the work that Julia Ziffer does in the German dub but that's a given) is proof of that as is the conversation she has with her adoptive mother in Episode 22, but she is proficient enough in Japanese to think in Japanese fluidly which is a relatively difficult thing to do. I mean if you are raised in a bilingual household it is relatively easier to do but mostly, I know from experience, you think in the language that is spoken more and if she came from the German Nerv base she had been speaking more German than Japanese.

It is also referenced that multiple people can be in an entry plug at the same time and actively pilot but it takes a significantly higher synch ratio most likely averaged between the people present inside to have the evangelion use its full power.

We learn that Angels in an embryotic state resemble mammalian embryos encased in Bakelite but still manage to live attesting to their extreme ability to live even before hatching and becoming incredibly diverse beings. Anyone who says otherwise get a living human embryo and encase it in the stuff that they make sports mouth guards out of and see how long it survives **(THAT STATEMENT WAS AN EXAGGERATION PLEASE DON'T GET ANYTHING ALIVE AND ENCASE IT IN POLYURATHANE YOU WILL PROBABLY END UP IN JAIL **_AND_** IF YOU TELL ME I WILL TELL THE POLICE. BE WARNED THAT THIS IS MY DISCLAIMER AND BECAUSE I HAVE PUT THIS HERE YOU CANNOT TELL THE POLICE THAT I TOLD YOU TO IT WAS ONLY TRYING TO GET MY POINT ACROSS AND THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE LOOKING AT THIS ASKING DUMB QUESTIONS, YES THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE THAT WOULD ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS)**.

Fully developed angels are capable of adapting to extreme environments: space, volcanoes, underwater, computers and seem to be able to do extreme things: like splitting into two separate organisms after being cut in half or acting like a bomb or secreting a corrosive acid.

Gendo and Fuyutsuki (who is the vice commander for people who are wondering) seem to travel around a lot more than stay still where the giant monsters are attacking. Misato has a special vendetta against Angels. Misato, Kaji and Ritsuko were involved in some kind of relationship during their college years and that while Asuka pursues him Kaji ignores her advances. Asuka has a strange attraction to Shinji and views Rei as a romantic rival.

And we get more insight into what exactly the Magi Supercomputers are, before they were hinted at and mentioned but we didn't really get to see what their importance was and how they are similar to evangelions.

**The Magi Supercomputers**

The S.C. Magi System are a trio of supercomputers designed by Dr. Naoko Akagi during her time with Gehirn when she researched bio-computers. The system she developed was three computers called Melchior, Balthasar and Casper that were implanted with a copy of three differing aspects of Dr. Naoko Akagi's personality using the Personality Transplant Operating System which is the same system used to operate the evangelions but on a much more literal and temporary scale. Magi-1 is Melchior and represents a scientist, Magi-2 Balthasar represents a mother, and Magi-3 Casper represents a woman. There are five other trios of supercomputers at the Nerv facilities in: Matsushiro, Berlin, Massachusetts, Hamburg, Beijing, and Nevada. The three original Magi in Tokyo-3's Nerv HQ run the base and the municipal government of Japan by majority decision.


End file.
